American girls today are the daughters of the revolution -- the
first generation that is reaping the full benefits of the women's
movement.
Their mothers and grandmothers fought and won the battles that produced
the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to
vote. They spearheaded the efforts that resulted in the 1973 Supreme
Court decision of Roe v.
Wade, which legalized abortion. They pressed for Title IX, giving
girls equal access to sports participation in school. Thanks in part to
the courage and perseverance of these foot soldiers, women today
play a wide range of professional sports, have easy access to effective
contraception, and attend Ivy League colleges and West Point (Harvard
and the U.S. military academies didn't admit women until the mid 1970s).

From a psychological point of view, the move toward
economic and social equality for women has made our daughters see
themselves in ways that are unfamiliar to those of us who are older.
Girls today are growing up in an environment where the status of women
is at an all-time high. The oldest members of the cohort of alpha girls
we studied were born in the late
1980s -- a tipping point of sorts -- just as women began to outnumber
men in college. They have grown with women's ascendance. Consider the
following:

The newest data from the National Center on Educational
Statistics show widening gaps between men and women at the
undergraduate and master's degree levels. For the first time, women
earned more first professional degrees than men. In the 2004-2005
academic year, 59 percent of all degrees were granted to women. Women
earned 62 percent of all associate's degrees, 59 percent of all
bachelor's degrees, 60 percent of all master's degrees, 48 percent of
doctorates, and 51 percent of professional degrees.

The professions of law, medicine, and business administration are
increasingly gender-balanced. In 1970, fewer than 10 percent of
students earning graduate degrees in these fields were women. In each
decade since, that number has increased. Today women earn approximately
40 percent of these professional degrees.

The 109th U.S. Congress (2005-2007) contained a total of 84
female members -- the highest number in its history, with 14 women in
the Senate and 70 in the House, including the Minority Whip. In 2006,
there were three states where both senators were women -- California,
Maine, and Washington. As a point of comparison, in 1991 there were
only four female senators and 28 congresswomen in total.

Since 1971, the number of women serving in state legislatures had
increased more than four-fold. In 2006, 22.8 percent of the 7,382 state
legislators in the U.S. were women. Women held 20.8 percent of the
state senate seats and 23.6 percent of the state house or assembly
seats. Three women served as presidents of state senates (CO, ME, WA),
and two women were speakers of state houses (OR, VT). Additionally,
women had been elected to statewide executive offices in 49 of the
nation's 50 states and held 25.7 percent of these positions across the
country.